How to Edit/Customize Contacts in the App Switcher in iOS 8.x

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In iOS 8, the task switcher finally stopped being functionally limited to showing open apps. A new “contacts” section got added to the top of the screen in task switcher so you could quickly access some of your contacts.

Interestingly, you can also customize which contacts show up in the task switcher. We’ve taken a look at enabling/disabling this feature but here's something else that you can do with the “quick contacts” feature in task switcher: customize them. Read on to find out how.

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The contacts in the app switcher (a.k.a task switcher) are fetched from two sources: recents and favorites. You can pick which ones show up in the app switcher. If you picked favorites, all contacts from your Favorites will show up. If you selected Recents, the most recent contacts you called/received a call from will be shown.

To configure this:

Open Settings

Tap on Mail,Contacts,Calendars

Under the Contacts label, tap on Show In App Switcher

Toggle the switch for Recents and/or Favorites

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Notice that you can have both Favorites and Recents show up in the app switcher.

What if you don't find a switch for Favorites? That's mostly because you haven’t added any contacts to Favorites. You can do this by going into the Favorites section of the Phone app and adding contacts to the list. Head back to the Show In App Switcher toggle and you should see a switch labeled Favorites.

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What do you think of this feature? Has having contacts show up in the App Switcher changed the way you make calls or communicate with your favorite contacts?

Jignesh Padhiyar is the founder of iGeeksBlog.com who has a keen eye for news, rumors and all the unusual stuff that happens around iPhone and iPad.

lucid

Alas, this doesn’t answer my needs — or live up to the title: “How to EDIT/CUSTOMIZE Contacts in the App Switcher in iOS 8.x”; it just tells you how to show or hide the whole batch. Nope; I want to EDIT them: I don’t want my recents to include one-off “errand” calls, and I don’t want to have to add every recent I want to see there to my favorites.